This site is for Alumni of the Northern California Macintosh-only reseller, ComputerWare: The MacSource. ComputerWare was dedicated to the Macintosh® since 1985. They sold more Apple® Macintosh computer systems, peripherals and software than any other authorized reseller in Northern California. This meant more selection, availability and value for you. When Apple introduced new products, ComputerWare got them first.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Steve Jobs: ComputerWare Employees Remember

Steve Jobs and ComputerWare had a interesting relationship. I think every employee of ComputerWare was an Apple Fanboy (Fanperson) in the greatest sense of the world, as they had dedicated their careers to Apple and Macintosh. We all have memories of Steve Jobs coming into ComputerWare stores, and therefore I'm pretty sure he was a fan of us in return! The interesting part was that he was so happy with ComputerWare, that he put us out of business by creating Apple Stores -- sometimes furnished with many of our former employees! Steve surely recognized ComputerWare as a great place to buy Macintosh, but we were the "only one" and only in the Bay Area. As Apple Fanboys, we quickly forgave him and loved the Apple Stores after a short time of pouting.

Geoff W. and I had a chance to chat with Steve Jobs at a MacWorld after-party in January 1998. It was very late, and we managed to corner him all to ourselves for a few minutes. We were very happy that he was back at Apple, and that things were starting to really turn around. The subject turned to the complexities of the "new Internet, and I said that what we really wanted to sell was a simple all-in-one Mac that was built for the Internet -- a classic plug-and-play Apple solution to what was at that time a common question in our stores: "how do I get on this world wide web thing?"

Steve smiled, yes, that smile that said he had something up his sleeve, and proceeded to give us the standard, "we've got some really exciting products coming out this year" line that I'd heard before from other vendors.

Three months later, Geoff and I received an invitation to a special Apple event at the Flint Center in Cupertino. In early May we attended, and got to watch Steve roll out the first iMac in all it's Bondi-blue glory!

1 comment:

I met Jobs once, he came in to buy a powerbook adapter in Palo Alto. He was insistent on which one he wanted, but he wanted the wrong one for a 5300. We went back and forth for a while until he decided I was right. I went around for a while after that saying that I had to be the only guy who won an argument with Steve Jobs.